Singin’ In The Rain Wearing Pink
Big-budget movies have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, but sometimes the staff still manage to make mistakes. Sometimes, they’re negligible and up for giggles, other times they’re big enough that ruin the entire magic of the movie.
With that said, today we have rounded up over 40 of the most outrageous wardrobe malfunctions that happened in movies that you might have missed. Get ready to be amazed because you will never believe what you’re going to read on this list.
The Moving Mole In Titanic
It’s one of the most beloved musicals of all time, earning itself a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. But as with most musicals, it’s not without its problems. Singin’ in the Rain features a lovely young Debbie Reynolds looking quite fashionable in the 1920s.
It turns out that she’s a little too fashionable for the time period since the demure pink ensemble was a bit too futuristic for the 20s. It fits much better in 1952 when the musical was actually filmed.
Nefretiri’s Bra In The Ten Commandments
There are several other mistakes during the set of Titanic, but this one is something you might have missed, considering it’s such a small detail!
Still, we think the picture above makes it clear what the mistake the movie’s makeup team did when shooting the Titanic.
Dorothy’s Suddenly Long Hair
As stunning as The Ten Commandment‘s Nefretiri, played by Anne Baxter, looked in the sheer dress, she could have benefited from a better bra. The editing of the film could have also used better censors.
Regardless, Baxter’s lacy bra is clearly visible through the thin material of her dress. The color of the dress is also not so relevant to the time period, as it would have been virtually impossible during those times to get a color like that. One might say that Nefretiri is a trendsetter.
The Belly Button In I Dream Of Jeannie
There are a plethora of mistakes in The Wizard of Oz, but one of the most annoying is Dorothy’s hair: It keeps changing lengths! It goes from medium to extremely long in alternating scenes, and sometimes even alternating shots.
This is due to the fact that movies are almost never shot in order, and reshoots are often necessary, but today the actress would be required to keep her hair the same length for the entirety of the shooting process.
The Guitar Of Back To The Future
I Dream of Jeannie is a story about a single woman who moves in with a single man. It was risqué for the time, but apparently not as shocking as showing a belly button on the television. In her interview with Today, Eden explained that while her genie costume bared her midriff, it could not expose her navel.
She said this was not a problem initially until producer George Schlatter wanted to “premiere” her navel. This frightened the NBC executives, and they all gathered to discuss Eden’s anatomy. There was also a lot of criticism when her costume shifted, which sometimes happened when she simply lifted her arms.
The Dress In I Know What You Did Last Summer
It’s one of the most popular but cheesy scenes in sci-fi. Marty McFly celebrates at the end of Back to the Future by rocking out to Chuck Berry on a Gibson ES-345 guitar, which hadn’t been invented until 1958.
Among the other bloopers in this list, it’s a minor one given that it’s only a three-year delay, but it’s still a pretty glaring mistake, particularly for a film about time travel. We get that the 1955 film was released in 1985 before they could really Google it, but encyclopedias still existed back then.
The Slippy Dress In The Tuxedo
As Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character Helen Shivers in I Know What You Did Last Summer, a gal who’s definitely not the brightest tool in the shed desperately tries to escape death, she attempts to climb a rope up to safety and away from the killer.
Her decision is a pretty dim one, but it’s nothing to think twice about — that is, until the camera shows Gellar frantically pulling the rope toward herself and we see what’s underneath her shiny, ill-fitting dress.
The Extremely High Slit Dress In Bedazzled
The Tuxedo stars Love Hewitt as the genius scientist Delilah “Del” Blaine, who finds herself in the clutches of a villain intent on drowning her. When he drags her into the pool, Love Hewitt thrashes about wildly, giving a convincing performance as someone who really doesn’t want to die a water-logged death, but also giving watchers a flash of her chest as her thin blue dress slips to the side.
She isn’t exposed for long, and the garment slides back into place the next moment, but the resultant tornado of bubbles that swirls around her can’t completely hide what happened.
Sunglasses Were Not Yet Invented
In Bedazzled, Elizabeth Hurley plays the sexy and aggressively flirty Devil who spends most of her scenes in provocative, body-hugging costumes, including a devil-red dress with a leg slit that goes all the way up.
Hurley’s Devil is wearing this in one of her first interactions with Elliot, inviting him into her unholy office to sign the soul-selling paperwork. As she sits down at her desk, the fabric of the dress flits away for a moment, revealing, well, whatever is underneath. Fans of the film continue to debate what, exactly, Hurley flashes, be it a skimpy undergarment or a lack of skimpy undergarment.
Tom Cruise’s All The Right Moves
In Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, the titular character can be seen wearing a highly stylized pair of round sunglasses. Such an object obviously didn’t exist in 1858 America, when the film was set.
Many people assume this was a mistake, but it was actually done on purpose, for style. Tarantino is known for taking such creative liberties.
Sheer Nighty In Pretty Woman
All The Right Moves tells the story of a high school football player played by the popular actor Tom Cruise. In the movie, he and his girlfriend, played by Lea Thompson, get hot and heavy in one scene.
When Cruise disrobes, you can briefly see beneath his shorts. Although it was an R-Rated movie, it is pretty clear that slip was not intentional.
The Accidental Flashing In Vanilla Sky
In Pretty Woman, Vivian Ward played by Julia Roberts stripped down (offscreen, of course) into her skivvies for an intimate night with Edward Lewis, the full-time corporate raider and part-time womanizer played by Richard Gere.
In this scene, audiences get a clear view of exactly what Roberts was trying so hard to keep hidden. While many may assume that the bare-chested shot is actually of Roberts’ body double, since she reportedly used one (Shelley Michelle, to name names) for some up-close sequences in Pretty Woman, her face is visible in the moment of malfunction.
Baby’s Not Yet Popular Shorts in Dirty Dancing
One of the most noteworthy scenes in Vanilla Sky involves such a move made by Cruise’s David Aames, who captures Cameron Diaz’s Julianna “Julie” Gianni, his one-time lover, and straps her to the bed.
Diaz, wearing a sheer dress, attempts to flip herself over on the mattress, and in doing so, accidentally shifts the top of the garment out of place. The actress is quick to fix the wardrobe malfunction mid-scene, pulling the gown into its original position, but the chest-exposing take wound up in the film’s final cut.
Ronda Rips Michelle’s Dress
Nobody puts Baby in a corner… or in historically accurate clothing, apparently. Dirty Dancing lead Baby, played by Jennifer Grey, is seen above dressed in jean shorts.
While some teenagers may have been pushing the limits, short, cutoff jean shorts didn’t become wildly popular until the 1970s, thanks to such rock legends as Patti Smith and Debbie Harry.
Megan’s Promiscuous Clothes In Jonah Hex
Ronda Rousey is a professional wrestler and has many wrestling competition awards under her belt. On the other hand, Michelle Rodriguez is an actress primed and ready for non-stop action.
When Rodriguez did a fight scene alongside Rousey in a dress for Furious 7, it’s no surprise that the dress came apart during the action scene.
The Uncooperative Underwear In Crank
The 2010 DC Comics adaptation of Jonah Hex was a serious box office flop, but we can’t blame just the costume department for all the movie’s shortcomings.
Even so, Megan Fox’s prostitute character Lilah Black might have been clothed how we think a prostitute might dress, but her revealing corset was nowhere near how women of the time period dressed, even in that line of work.
Closer To Natalie Portman
Amy Smart, who plays Eve Lydon in Crank: High Voltage, gets the tiniest get-up of the bunch: a pair of itty-bitty bottoms that are more like underwear than shorts. Basically, they’re a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. And, with the help of some awkward camerawork, one does.
When Smart’s Eve hops on the back of a motorcycle in a getaway scene (the cops are after her and Jason Statham’s Chev Chelios), the camera suddenly shifts to focus on her backside, where viewers get a super intimate look at her underwear. Because there wasn’t enough material to cover her properly as she slid herself onto the bike’s seat, the audience also gets a look at a whole lot more
Lynn Collins’s Costume Was Not Skimpy Enough
In the movie Closer, Natalie Portman played an exotic dancer. When Clive Owen’s character initially spoke to her, she took him into a champagne room. There is one small wardrobe malfunction that got the audience’s attention upon the film’s premiere.
In a scene, she quickly moved her legs and in one movement her bra slipped down her shoulders, which made it into the final cut of the film.
Zippers In Amadeus
In an inverse of some of our previous entries, the issue with some of the costumes in John Carter is that they’re not skimpy enough.
The costume worn by Lynn Collins as Martian warrior Princess Dejah Thoris certainly couldn’t be accused of being prudish, however, it’s quite tame compared to the costumes described in the original books the film was based on.
Almost Famous, But Not Until 1997
1984’s Amadeus is widely lauded as one of the greatest films of all time, both for its script and for its recreation of 18th-century Vienna. However, there’s one glaring mistake in this recreation.
Several of the film’s high-profile costumes featured noticeable zippers, which weren’t invented until 1913, about 60 years after the film was set.
Kristen Bell’s Accidental Exposure In Spartan
The “Tiny Dancer” scene in Almost Famous introduced a new generation to the Elton John classic. The entire film soundtrack was full of old-school tracks that immersed new audiences in an incredible time in rock and roll history. The film takes place in the 1970s when the main character meets the band Stillwater at a Black Sabbath concert.
As the band continues on tour, Kate Hudson and Patrick Fugit’s characters are walking through a hotel hallway. They pass one fan who’s wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt. Director Cameron Crowe didn’t realize that that particular shirt design was released in 1997, not the ’70s.
Umbrellas In Troy
This David Mamet political thriller is nothing if not potent, featuring a stacked cast glistening with the likes of William H. Macy, Val Kilmer, Tia Texada, Clark Gregg, and Ed O’Neill, as well as a ton of action-packed scenes that keep you riveted in shock and tension.
Things get so heated in Spartan, in fact, that one of the film’s brightest stars, Kristen Bell, falls victim to a bosom-centric wardrobe malfunction during a fight scene. Bell, who portrays the fictional U.S. President’s missing daughter, Laura Newton, takes a punch so powerful that it sends her tank top all askew. The result? She unwittingly flashes the audience. Clearly, the editors didn’t think it scandalous enough to snip out.
The Revealing Stumble in Star Wars
The 2004 epic Troy was met with mixed critical reception, even though it tallied a huge box office draw. Perhaps if the writers had researched things a little bit better, the critics might not have been so mean.
In another screw-up, we see Paris and Helen riding through the streets beneath an umbrella to shield them from the sun. The problem is that this type of umbrella wasn’t invented until the 5th century BCE by the Greeks, a full 800 years after Troy was conquered.
Drew Barrymore’s Too ’90s Haircut
In Return of the Jedi, actress Femi Taylor portrays Oola, the green-skinned Twi’lek slave dancer Jabba the Hutt holds captive in his palace. Jabba makes her strut about in her skimpy outfit while he watches. He then grabs hold of Oola’s chain during the sequence, making her stumble and causing a wardrobe malfunction that makes her costume reveal something you’d never think you’d see in a Star Wars movie.
The slip happens in the blink of an eye, but it definitely ended up in the movie. The fact that Lucas was a stickler for scrubbing up Star Wars footage for home releases makes it especially bizarre that this malfunction didn’t end up on the cutting room floor.
Ruffles In Tudors
The Wedding Singer was set in the 1980s, a time when the philosophy for hair was “the bigger, the better.” However, the film was shot in the ’90s, not the ’80s.
Nothing made that more evident than Drew Barrymore’s short, flipped bob. That hairstyle would have been the opposite of fashionable when the movie was set.
Wellington Boots In Pride And Prejudice
The historical drama The Tudors takes place in the 15th century and features a glaring costume inaccuracy. Throughout, many women are seen wearing neck ruffs.
However, during this period, that would have been considered uncouth for Western European women of their stature.
No Stockings In Pearl Harbor
The critically acclaimed 2005 Pride and Prejudice was another adaptation of the famed Jane Austen novel, but an A-list cast and stirring performances, particularly from Kiera Knightley in an Oscar-nominated role, make this version a must-watch.
However, not everything hit the mark, especially concerning the rubber boots worn by the characters. The world-famous Wellington boots were not invented until 40 years after the setting of the film.
Portman’s Hair Should Have Been Worn Back
The Michael Bay-helmed Pearl Harbor is short on historical accuracy in lieu of, as critic Roger Ebert famously quipped, a love triangle of “stunning banality.” This might help explain this costume mistake.
The women in the film are often seen not wearing any stockings and baring their legs. This was a serious social faux pas of the day. Some supporters have argued that this is maybe more historically accurate since nylon would have been hard to come by during the war, but we’re not willing to give Bay that much credit.
Bullet Bras Beneath Ancient Robes
They got this one half-right. Natalie Portman wears the correct hood for a woman in 16th century France, but the French hood ordinarily had a veil attached, and her hair should be pulled back underneath it.
The costume designers of The Other Boleyn Girl failed to do their research. It was scandalous for a woman of rank to allow her hair to be seen in public.
Advanced Bullet Holes
The 1953’s film adaption of Julius Caesar features numerous instances of female cast members very clearly wearing “bullet bras.”
These pointed undergarments were a fashion staple in the early 1950s, which explains how they showed up on the film’s set. The only issue? The movie is set centuries before their invention.
Amy Adam’s Braces In Catch Me If You Can
In Pulp Fiction, when Jules and Vincent go to the apartment for the briefcase, they both end up shooting Brett after Jules delivers his famous soliloquy. In the later telling of the scene, we see the person who jumps out and shoots at them, apparently leaving holes in the wall as the bullets miss Jules and Vincent.
However, there is what looks like a continuity error in this scene, as the bullets are clearly shown in the wall before the guy jumps out and shoots at them. Quentin Tarantino is known for being a perfectionist when it comes to his movies, but what happened here?
The British Navy Was Not Scarlet
Future Oscar winner Amy Adams has a memorable turn in 2002’s Catch Me If You Can. However, her character features a notable costuming foible: she’s wearing wired-metal braces.
While braces existed in the 1960s – when the film was set – the wired-metal style as seen in the film wasn’t used until the 1970s.
Pirates Don’t Wear Cowboy Hats
The redcoats are coming… and a couple of decades early! The first Pirates of the Caribbean film is set sometime in the 1720s, but the famous red coats were not issued to the British military until 1747.
The men still wore red, but before that date, it was a darker, more inexpensive shade called madder red. The scarlet coats were reserved for officers and sergeants.
A Gladiator Wearing Sport Shorts
Another mistake from the Pirates of the Caribbean film. Look at the picture, just behind Jack Sparrow. This extra either showed up to the wrong film set or forgot to put his costume on!
You can see him in the background in the same Pirates movie, sporting a cowboy hat and a white T-shirt. You’re in the wrong place, my dude: There are no cows in the ocean! (Unless he’s wrangling sea cows.)
Captain America’s Peggy With Her Hair Down
The jeans-wearing extra in Gladiator wasn’t the only mistake eagle-eyed viewers have caught in the Oscar-winning film. In the Colosseum battle with the retired champion, Maximus loses his footing and tumbles into the dirt.
As he rolls over, you can see actor Russell Crowe wearing modern-day black sporting shorts under his blue slave clothing.
Too Many Purple Robes
Everybody has their favorite Marvel film or hero. Many argue the Captain America films are the MCU’s strongest, but that still couldn’t save it from landing on this list of costume mistakes.
In this case, it’s The First Avenger‘s Peggy Carter (played by Hayley Atwell) that has some crying foul. While it was perfectly acceptable for women to wear their hair down, women in the Armed Services would have been expected to have their hair up at all times in uniform.
The Boots In There Will Be Blood
In the film Pompeii, many of the more affluent characters are seen wearing purple robes. This would have been a bold and reckless act at the time. Purple was a color worn by nobility, as the dye was very expensive to make.
The emperor at the time, Nero, outlawed their use by anyone besides him. Anyone who broke the law would be sentenced to death.
Kilts In Braveheart
The labor Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, portrays in There Will Be Blood requires a solid, reliable, and sturdy pair of work boots, and Plainview can be seen wearing a pair of brown leather ones.
They look suitably expensive, but they also look unsuitably modern. During a moment of rest, the camera shows the bottom of Plainview’s boots, and they bear a waffle pattern, the kind found on early Nike running shoes. The latter is widely acknowledged as the originator of that kind of groove, which it pioneered in 1972, decades after the California oil boom. Definitely not something that should’ve been in a movie set in 1989.
Combed Hair In Jurassic Park
The kilts are something iconic and sacred to Scottish people, but this doesn’t mean that their use in Braveheart was accurate. Mel Gibson’s Scottish war epic is as iconic as the Scottish kilt — which didn’t come into fashion until the 16th century.
The kilts were introduced in 1280, many years before the war in the movie actually took place. The Scottish face paint is historically accurate, but it would not have been worn in the same time period as those famous kilts.
Tom Cruise’s Armor Was Antiquated
Jurassic Park is a meticulously shot movie. It still holds up to special effects standards today, over 30 years later. This is partially due to the extreme detail that went into the creation of their giant, animatronic T-Rex.
One little thing that got missed? One of the lead actors had his hair fine in one shot, but messy a second later. Still, if that’s their worst mistake, that editing department gets gold stars across the board.
The Telescope in Robin Hood
Who doesn’t love Tom Cruise? He always makes great movies, but he has his fair share of mistakes. Take for example The Last Samurai, where Tom Cruise plays a retired U.S. officer who, in 1870, fights with Japanese samurai warriors.
Apparently, the costume department didn’t think that the armor of 19th-century samurai was cool enough because they instead outfitted Cruise and his companions in armor from two centuries earlier.
The Saucy Stroll In The Terminator
When Azeem handed Robin Hood a telescope, Robin Hood used it to scout out the enemies ahead. But the fact that a telescope existed then was actually a mistake.
The film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, set in 1194, must have time-traveled into the future because Hans Lippershey didn’t invent the telescope for another 400 years!
The Mood Ring In My Girl
Even the former Governator has suffered an incident on the set, experiencing a wardrobe malfunction countless fans have since noticed — and the director and editors apparently didn’t. During the opening scene of 1984’s The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger walks around in his birthday suit before he gets the chance to cover up.
Low lighting, clever distant camera angles, and the stereotypically poor quality of the original 1980s footage preserve Schwarzenegger’s dignity for the most part, but those naughty bits still made it into the movie — the remastered Blu-ray edition shows the actor stark naked and on full display as he approaches a group of young ruffians.
Maguire’s Helmet In Seabiscuit
For people of a certain age, there’s no bigger tear-jerking film than 1991’s My Girl. However, those who can see through their tears over the fate of Macaulay Culkin’s character will notice a glaring historical anachronism in the film.
Namely, the character Vada (Anna Chlumsky) has a mood ring that serves as a plot point. However, mood rings weren’t introduced until 1975, two years after the film’s 1973 setting.
Headsets In Captain America
In the period drama Seabiscuit, Tobey Maguire portrayed John “Red” Pollard, the jockey who ride the titular horse to victory during the Great Depression. Suffice to say, there are plenty of horse racing scenes during each.
The issue? Well, during these scenes riders including Maguire are wearing helmets with chin straps. These types of straps weren’t introduced until the mid-1950s, over two decades after the film was set.
The first Captain America film makes another appearance on our list, this time due to a headset worn by Kenneth Choi’s character Jim Morita.
During a military raid, Morita – one of Captain America’s allies in the Howling Commandos – is seen wearing a headset that is way too advanced for the 1940s, even the sci-fi-influenced 40s of the MCU.